AIBU to ask whether the death penalty should apply for certain crimes in the UK?

[PenelopeJoanSterling]

Because the topics got mixed up on my previous thread i thought id ask here, for certain types of crime in the uk, would you be either for or against the death penalty for certain crimes and why ?

Not always. Not all victims/ families of victims support the death penalty.

If the death penalty actually deterred murder, I might take a different view, but there is no evidence that murder rates are lower in countries/ states with the death penalty.

Not sure which way to vote as your voting isn't clear.
No, I don't want to be in a country where we can legally kill others.
So for that, YABU

I'm in favour of the death penalty, for anyone who takes a life, and there is absolutely NO doubt of their guilt.

Why do people like Axel Rudakubana, who murdered the 3 children in Stockport, and then went on to throw boiling water over a prison officer, deserve to live? He didn't give two hoots about the children he killed, he wasn't forced to do it, he CHOSE to do it, and then not happy with that, continued to try and harm the prison officers whose job it is to look after him. There really are some people who don't deserve to have our hard earned money spent on keeping them alive. Which in the case of Rudakubana, is likely to be in the region of £4,680,000, and that is at today's prices, so this is likely a low estimate, bearing in mind the 52 years that he MUST serve, before they would even consider parole. In the meantime, the parents of those little girls that he killed, won't have a penny spent on compensating them for their loss and the suffering he has caused, and even if they did, no amount of money could make up for what he has put them through.

I say that if the evidence is indisputable, then the death penalty should be restored.

I also believe that if prison was the hard life that it was originally intended to be, our prisons wouldn't be nearly as full as they are today, and we wouldn't be forced to release criminals into the community to do more harm. However, these are just my opinions, and I know that many will disagree.

Even one error is too much. Would you be happy if that one error related to someone you know?

There is no justification for killing someone, ever.

This has pretty much always been my position, up until recently.

I think some people should just be put down like dogs; there's no reason to keep them alive just to be locked up in prison forever. Just take them out the back of the courthouse after conviction, and shoot them. Where there is incontrovertible evidence particularly, it shouldn't be an issue.

Will mistakes be made? Yes, of course (hopefully minimal). Will innocent people die? Probably (again, hopefully very few). But humans are not an endangered species, and innocent people die or are murdered all the time. Children die of cancer. Pregnant women die in car accidents. Good young men are murdered. I know someone who died simply because the health system was overloaded and his file was misplaced, so he didn't get seen for his symptoms for nearly 9 months - and by then it was too late for treatment to work and he died, only a few weeks after the birth of his first child.

The number of people wrongly executed would be a drop in the ocean compared to all those kinds of tragic accidents, or preventable deaths.

The only issue is that I don't trust governments to have that kind of power, and not use it for nefarious purposes. Although these days, I'm starting to wonder if it's worth the risk.

I see no benefit in keeping violent men alive, to potentially be released into society again.

Well, that's not true. Killing in self-defence is absolutely justified.

Nope, not in support of death penalty.

What I would support is same as Australia - if you’re not born in that country, you serve your sentence and then get deported back to your country of birth, regardless of your legal status there or how long you’ve lived there.

No.

I was arrested because someone said i sent 2 emails from a particular lap top.

At the time of the first email I was in Chile, the laptop was in Kansas city.

When the second one was sent I was in Uruguay, the lap top, technically did not exist. It was on a flight from the USA to Australia that goes over the international date line.

The police have only recently started asking for applicants to have or to study for a degree.

The police are not well educated. I have never committed a crime, not even a speeding ticket, but I have had lots of negative experiences with police officers.

I would rather have life sentences that mean life. And proper prisons without luxuries.

So if the jury gets it wrong and the defendant has already been killed , do we round up the jury and shoot them too? They killed an innocent person after all.
Name me one place where the state having the ability to kill it's citizens has worked out well?

If it ever gets reinstated, I hope you and the rest of the "can't make an omlette" folks are among the first to be wrongfully convinced, or lose loved ones to a wrongful conviction.

I haven’t RTHT but no I don’t agree with the death penalty. Did you know that in the US when you are put to death by the State the medical examiner writes on the death certificate that you died by Homocide? So a person(s) causing the death of another - would you be willing to do the deed? Would you consider yourself a murderer if you did, even a justifiable one? It has been said that unless you could act as executioner you have no business supporting the death penalty.

secondly, it’s not a deterrent.

Don’t get me wrong. I would not shed a tear over the death of many of those guilty of serious crimes and I hope their time remaining on earth is sheer hell. But I could not and would not endorse State killings.

I actually meant as a punishment.

What a strange and nasty sentiment.

Happily, neither I nor anyone I know has ever been wrongly accused of a crime, so I think that would be deeply unlikely to happen. It's leagues more likely that we'll die of cancer or other conditions that would be preventable if we had a better medical system, or the financial ability to pay for private treatment.

Ah, apologies – fair enough, then.

The American super max prisons allow contact between prisoners & the prison officers. Imagine knowing for the rest of your life you are never going to have any contact with a human being again & are going to spend 24 hours a day in a cell with nothing to do but stare at 4 walls, no television, radio, books, I've even seen in a documentary where the cells are soundproofed in a foreign jail so the prisoner is trapped with nothing but their own thoughts. For people like the Southport killer & Damien Bendall it is nothing short of what they deserve as their behaviour hasn't changed in an ordinary prison.

No. It's a terrible idea. Why would we go backwards?

No!!

So you're fine with the state murdering innocent people? As long as it's not too many...? Strange choice but ok, how would you like to be executed when one of these murders happens? Or do you not consider that you would have played a role in it?

As most countries don’t have birth right citizenship, I think its about 30, so thats a fairly unwise policy.

My husband is a Swedish citizen, both his parents are Swedish citizens, he grew up in Sweden. However he was born prematurely when his mum was on a business trip in Spain, and spent his first 17 days there before he was well enough to fly home.

Deporting someone to a county where they have no right of residence seems like a fairly idiotic thing to do.

Do you 100% trust the criminal justice system? Do you believe the police, the scientists, the CPS, the lay people on a jury are infallible? Not susceptible to any bias, human error, ever? Do you believe all solicitors are equally competent and all barristers equally persuasive? Because with death, once its done, its done, so its not like any failings can be corrected.
Are you happy with the families of victims having to have cases brought up over and over while the perpetrator makes repeated appeals and its all over the news? Happy to pay for that? Happy to see perpetrators walk free because juries are less likely to convict?
It seems particularly odd to me that many of those in favour of this are those most critical of our current system thinking it 'two tier'. Yet want to give the state they consider incapable of acting without bias even more draconian power.

Maybe you could ask her

The USA and Singapore are hardly ‘backward and tinpot’ or not ‘serious’.

I would argue the correlation between societies with higher levels of violence and the death penalty is higher.

Absolutely not. Ever. Miscarriages of Justice come to light all the time, even one innocent person being killed by the state is one too many.